


gestures of resignation

by cassie_p



Series: gestures [1]
Category: The Social Network (2010)
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-06
Updated: 2015-09-06
Packaged: 2018-04-19 07:21:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4737635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cassie_p/pseuds/cassie_p
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So, Wardo froze the accounts.  In hindsight?  Obviously not his best idea.</p>
            </blockquote>





	gestures of resignation

**Author's Note:**

> So I know I said I'd write an epilogue to my other fic, but I saw this lying around and thought it might make a good prologue instead...
> 
> Warnings: there is one instance of a homophobic slur.

So, Wardo froze the accounts.  In hindsight?  Obviously not his best idea.  Did he ever claim it was his best idea?  No.  But for him to say that he _expected_ Mark to react quite so viciously was a gross overstatement.

 He takes a deep breath.  

 …thousand (.03%) of shares will remain after full dilution…

 He knows he fucked up.  He didn’t know it meant point-zero-three-percent.  He didn’t know it meant that Mark would want him out of the company, because why else would Mark take away almost all of his shares?  He couldn’t fire him, because that would be bad press.  Wardo imagines Chris saying that; Wardo imagines his three closest friends in the world conspiring behind his back to boot him out of a company he helped them build from the ground up.  

 “Whose idea was it?”  he asks finally.  He isn’t crying; he will not cry.  If Mark wants him gone, then he’ll leave.

 “Mr. Saverin?” one of them asks.

 He looks up at them, and he sees the moment they realise he knows.  He sees the moment they realise their carefully crafted legalise maneuvers didn’t fool him, and that he knows.

 “Was it Sean Parker or Mark who suggested diluting my shares was the proper solution to eject me from this company without formally firing me?”  He looks solidly at the wood table, the table upon which a piece of paper represents his best friend betraying him.

 Finally, one of the lawyers speaks.  “We don’t know who the idea originally came from,” he says, “but Mr. Zuckerberg came to us and asked us to draw up these papers.”

 Eduardo laughs wetly.  “Okay,” he says.  “Can I have a pen?”

 They all blink in shock.  He looks up at them.  “To sign.  Can I have a pen so I can sign the papers?”

 “Mr. Saverin,” he says.  “We can talk to Mr. Zuckerberg.  We can negotiate this deal.”

 “No,” he says.  He shakes his head.  No negotiating.  The time for that has gone.

 The same lawyer as before says, “Mr. Saverin, it would take only a very small push to convince Mr. Zuckerberg to give you more shares.”

 “No pushes, sir,” because his mother raised him right, even if he is being ousted from his best friend’s life in an underhanded deal.  “I’ve been pushing Mark since the day we met.  I thought…” he chokes on another half-hearted laugh.  “I thought that maybe he didn’t know how to push back.  I thought that maybe he…maybe he was just waiting for the right moment.  I thought that maybe it wasn’t just me pushing, maybe he was pushing back.  Or at least pulling.”

 “Mr. Saverin,” he says, but then his mouth twists like maybe he doesn’t know how to go on.  “Mr. Saverin.”

 “I thought, but apparently I was wrong.  Mark wants me gone, and I’m not going to push.”  Eduardo thinks back to Harvard, to Kirkland.  To algorithms on windows, to FaceMash.  He thinks back to thirty-hour coding binges, to pulling Mark from his laptop and pushing him into bed, tumbling after him so they would wake in the morning shoved back to front (or on rare occasions, Mark’s head pillowed on his chest, waking with the scent of his own shampoo in Mark’s hair because Mark always forgot to buy his own).  At the time, when he rolled into bed beside Mark, at the time he thought that Mark’s hand would clutch the front of his shirt, pulling Wardo into the bed with him.  He thought, he thought, he thought.

 “Mr. Saverin,” one of the other lawyers says, and Eduardo knows it’s not the first time from the annoyed expression on her face and the pitying one on the male lawyer’s.  She’s holding a pen, the one he asked for to sign away the best friendship he’s ever had.  He thought he was trying.  He thought it was working.

 “Are you sure?” the male one says.  The pity in his tone does nothing to help Eduardo’s uncertainty.  Besides, weren’t lawyers supposed to be heartless?

 “Yes, I’m sure.”  He takes the pen, and he signs the dotted line with a barely trembling flourish.  He takes a deep breath.  Mark wants him out, so he’s leaving.

 “Mr. Saverin, the negotiation process would be painless.  Only good could—”

 “I said no, goddammit,” he yells, and the pen skitters across the table where he didn’t realize he threw it.  He lets out a breath like a sob, and he interlocks his fingers.  He presses his forehead to his overlapping thumbs, and he gulps in his breaths, desperate to be composed once again so he can move his hands from in front of his face.  He looks up at the lawyer; the one who was trying to salvage a relationship Wardo didn’t know was broken.  “I’m sorry, I wasn’t—”

 “I understand,” the lawyer interjects, before Eduardo can make even more of a fool of himself.

 Eduardo is fighting back tears in the glass-walled conference room in the office building of a company he helped create that doesn’t want him anymore.  He’s crying about a crush that lost all hope the moment that he wrote the algorithm on the window at Kirkland, and allowed a drunken Mark to create FaceMash.  He sucks in a breath, and he blinks away the tears.  This is exactly why Mark diluted his shares, because he let his emotions get in the way of his work.  He needs to get himself together, and then he can be the CFO Mark needs.  He will always do what Mark needs, because he needs Mark.

 Eduardo stands, and he tilts his chin up.  “Is there anything else you needed from me?” he says, and he’s inordinately proud of the way his voice doesn’t shake.

 The female lawyer says no, and the male one shakes his head.  Eduardo nods and he leaves the room.  He heads for the stairwell, but a figure runs towards him before he can reach the safety of the steps.

 “Wardo, hey Wardo, wait up!” Sean fucking Parker yells as Eduardo tries to leave Facebook with an iota of his dignity still intact.

 “Don’t fucking call me that,” he snarls, because Sean fucking Parker, asshole extraordinaire, just stole his best friend from him, and his company from him, and expects to be allowed to call him something only Mark was ever allowed.

_((He remembers the first time Mark called him that, too.  Mark was drunk, off lack of sleep and the bottle of Jägermeister._

_“Dwarduh….Edwarrdee…Drwardee…Your name has too many fucking syllables, Dwardo,” Mark slurred, his numbs hands pawing at Eduardo’s shirt as Eduardo tried to shove him into bed.  “But Ed is a terrible name, and so is Eddie,” Mark continued._

_“Why do nicknames always have to come from the first syllable, Mark?” Eduardo smirked in a manner that could be called fond. “I thought you encouraged upsetting,” Eduardo groaned from the effort of lifting Mark off the floor, “upsetting cultural norms.”_

_Mark grinned up at him, his eyes shining.  “You’re my favorite, Wardo.”  Mark made a noise like an elated seal.  “Wardo!” Mark yelled, and Wardo laughed as he pushed him into the bed._

_“Wardo,” Mark muttered miserably as Wardo tried to walk away.  Wardo went back and curled up behind Mark.  “Love you, Wardo,” Mark whispered, and Eduardo felt him shift to dead weight in his arms._

_“I love you too,” Wardo said to the hairs at the nape of Mark’s neck.))_

 “My name’s Eduardo,” Eduardo says, and turns around to look at Sean fucking Parker.

 “Eduardo, sorry,” he smiles in a way that’s supposed to be disarming.  “My bad.”

 Eduardo stares blankly.

 “Right,” Sean says.  “So, anyways, you’re leaving.  Good.”

 “Good?” Eduardo asks.

 Sean’s eyes darken, and his smile turns into something feral.  “You understood Mark’s implications.  He isn’t normally one for subtlety, but I convinced him that with you?  Subtle was probably the best option.”

 Eduardo grits his teeth, and his eyes narrow.  “What the fuck are you talking about?” he hisses.

 Sean chuckles, and the sound sends glass shards into his heart.  “He knows about your pathetic little crush, Wardo darling.  This is his version of saying, ‘I’m sorry, but I’m not interested’.”

 Eduardo blanches.  “Shut the fuck up; you don’t know what you’re fucking talking about.”  He stabs the air with his finger, aimed at Sean fucking Parker’s stupid little face.

 He tilts his head.  “Don’t I?  There’s only one reason a stick-in-the-mud like you would endorse something as innovative as Facebook, and that’s because you’re in love with the founder.  You gave him all your money because you’re pathetically devoted to him, and you want nothing more than for the two of you to run away together back to Harvard.  Fag marriage is legal in Massachusetts, right?” Sean asks with a sneer.

 “Fuck off,” he mutters, and he tries not to let the terrified hurt seep into his voice.  His eyes skitter around the room, looking for anything to get him out of the conversation.

 “You guys are all wrong for each other, personally and professionally.  You’re the wrong CFO for Facebook, and,” he laughs whole-heartedly, like breaking Eduardo Saverin is his favorite pass-time, “and you were always the wrong match for Mark.”

 Eduardo gulps over the lump in his throat.  “I get it, okay?  I knew that it…I mean, I’d always hoped…” He takes a deep breath, avoiding Sean fucking Parker’s eyes.  “I get it.  Tell Mark…don’t tell Mark anything.  My resignation letter will be on his desk first thing Monday morning, okay?”  He nods.  The tears he’d been fighting back were slowly creeping their way back up to his eyes.

 Sean pats Eduardo’s shoulder, his eyes alight.  “It’ll be okay, Wardo my man.  Really.”

 Eduardo pulls his shoulder out from under Sean’s grasp.

 “Wardo?” Mark’s voice rings out from behind them.  He was walking out of the other conference room, the one with actual walls.  “Hey, Wardo!”  He starts to jog over.

 Eduardo chokes back a sob.  “Don’t say anything, okay?”  He nods sharply, his eyes trained at the floor, and then he turns and runs.

 Marks eyebrows knit in confusion.  “Wardo?” he calls quietly to the stairwell door that was banging shut.

 Sean turns and looks at him, with his features arranged into what looked like pity.  Mark takes the last few steps towards him slowly, warily.

 “Sean, what the fuck just happened?” he asks slowly.

 “Eduardo left, Mark,” Sean says quietly.  “He said,” Sean takes a deep breath.  “He said that he was never the right CFO for Facebook, and that this company is holding him back.  He said that the only way he would ever accomplish anything in his life was if he left, and made his own path.”  Sean puts a hand on Mark’s shoulder.  The same hand and the same shoulder as the one he had on Eduardo when Mark walked out of the last-minute shareholders meeting Sean had arranged.  “He signed the contract, Mark.  He said he was going to suggest lowering his shares anyways.  He’s sending in the resignation papers on Monday, and he’s going back to New York.”

 Mark choked on his breath.  “I—he—he can’t just leave.”  He sobbed on his exhale.  “He can’t just leave me like that.”

 “I’m so sorry, Mark.”  The hand on his shoulder squeezed.  “It would probably be best not to contact him, at least not in the near future.  It can’t be easy for him to leave you guys.  He just has to do what’s best for him.  Don’t you want what’s best for him?”

 Mark swallows and gulps in air.  He nods dazedly.  “I…yeah.  Yeah, of course.  I’m just,” he gestures towards his MacBook.  “I’m just gonna work, okay?”

 “Yeah, no, of course man,” Sean says, and he smiles like he’s reassuring a little kid scared to leave his mom on his first day of daycare.  “I’ll make sure no one bothers you.”

 Mark nods and he goes to his laptop.  He pretends like he isn’t shaking as he wires in, the headphones slipping out of his hands every time he tries to put them on.

 As soon as Mark is preoccupied, Sean grins like a shark.  “Mission accomplished,” he mutters to himself.   _Time for some congratulatory partyin’,_ he thinks as he leaves early.

 * * * * *

 Monday comes around, and even though Mark sees it coming (knows it’s coming), it still hurts to see the resignation letter sitting on his desk, couriered in from FedEx that morning because Eduardo had gone back to New York, and FedEx was the only service fast enough to get a package (or a signed and official declaration that a friendship had ended) across the United States in two days.

 Mark knew it was coming, but the reality of seeing the paper on his desk still brings him to a halt.  His breath stops coming regularly and he has to sit down before his dizziness overtakes him.

 He puts it in his bottom drawer and refuses to pull it out until Sean comes by asking about it.

 * * * * *

 Mark tells the rest of the company after he meets up with HR and the other big names that don’t technically outrank him, but that he still needs the input of in order to make big decisions.

 He walks out into the generic office area.  “Hey guys?” he calls.  “Guys?”  He sighs, and feels short for the millionth time in his life.  He tries a few more times.  In the end, he jumps up on his desk and yells, “Hey!  This is your CEO fucking speaking, could I have a minute of the time I’m paying you to make an important fucking announcement?”

 He watches everyone who was wired in pull their heads out of their asses and pay attention to him.  “Thanks,” he mutters and jumps down.

 “This morning, our CFO Eduardo Saverin resigned from his post.  A replacement has not yet been chosen, so in the interim Sean Parker will be acting CFO.  All information regarding our finances will now be directed to him.  You can contact him in person,” Mark gestures to where Sean was standing, “or his email address is now sparker@cfo.facebookadmin.com.  Thanks for your attention, now get the fuck back to work.”  

 Mark was careful, throughout his entire speech, to remain toneless, blank-faced.  It’s what’s best for Wardo, he thinks, and he runs out of the room before he has to face Dustin’s indignation and terror.

  _I want what’s best for Wardo,_ he tries to force himself to believe.  He admits defeat the second he kneels in front of the toilet and pukes up the Red Vines and Mountain Dew he ate three days ago, the day Wardo left him.

 * * * * *

 Because everyone deserves one day to be a cliché after they realize the love of their lives doesn’t love them back, the day after Wardo returned to New York from Palo Alto (and the crushing realization that he just lost his best friend, and the only thing that had ever made his father proud of him) was spent on his couch.  He stayed in his pajamas (and if the shirt was pilfered from Mark’s laundry a year and a half ago it was because Wardo always did his fucking laundry, so he had earned the right to steal one fucking shirt, okay?), sat on his couch, and gained ten pounds in ice cream that he subsequently lost by unattractively snotcrying into his pillows as he watched The Notebook, and then Titanic, and then (because he is very obviously a masochist) Star Wars I-III.

 * * * * *

 When he wakes up, he has melted ice cream in his hair.  Even someone grieving over losing the most important person in his life can appreciate the hilarity of this situation.  As such, Eduardo laughs so hard that he falls off of his couch, but is too far gone in how pathetically ridiculous his life has become that he just stays there, and he laughs for a few more—minutes? seconds? hours?—for a while longer.  When he’s finally done laughing, the sun shining in from the window opposite his couch has melted even more of the ice cream, so it swishes like soup when he tries to pick it up.

He throws out the probably rancid ice cream, and straightens up his living room.  Every DVD is placed back in the case, and each case is placed in alphabetical order back on his shelf.  His pillows are placed back in their proper places; his table ornaments are rearranged in a fashion to imply comfort in his otherwise impersonal apartment.  Ignoring the tearstains on the pillows, his living room looks like the perfect stereotype of a young businessman.  

The tearstains will dry with time, at which point Wardo, the naïve Harvard student, will be replaced by Eduardo Luiz Saverin, the world-hardened businessman.

* * * * *

“I’m never speaking to you again,” Dustin says, leaning against the doorway to Mark’s office.

“How long have you been standing there?”  Mark pushes past him to walk to his desk.  There’s an open bag of Red Vines ( _the same one from the day Wardo left you,_ his mind whispers) on his desk, and a pyramid of energy drink cans on his floor.  He sits down in his chair, not bothering to shove the papers off of it.  “Did Linda forget to clean up this morning, or something?”

 Dustin turns around.  “I told her to take the day off.”

 “I thought you weren’t speaking to me,” Mark deadpans.  His eyebrows knit together.  “Why would you do that?  She’s my employee.”

 “Your punishment for being a complete and utter douchebag is you have to clean your own goddamned office for once in your pathetic life,” Dustin screams.  He hyperventilates, his face red.

 Mark blinks owlishly.  “What—”

 Dustin sneers.  “And you don’t even fucking know what I’m talking about.  Fucking figures, you dense fucking moron.”

 Mark stands up.  “I don’t know what you think you fucking know, Moskovitz, but I’m still your boss, and the CEO of this company.  Shut the fuck up before I have to fire you.”

 “Fire me like you fired Wardo, huh?”  Dustin slams his fist down on his desk.  “You know what, Zuckerberg, go the fuck ahead.”  He laughs mockingly.  “You know who you have left once you take me and Eduardo out of the equation?”

 “I don’t know what you’re—”

 “No one, Mark.  No one.  You have three people in this world who actually give a damn about you as a person.  Three.  Wardo, me, and Chris.  You lost Wardo when you fired him.  Chris was Wardo’s friend first anyways, so he’s gone.  And if you fire me, you have nobody.”  Dustin looks directly into Mark’s eyes, like he was searching for something.  For a moment, the mask of anger he had pasted across his features dropped, showing the fear underneath it.  Slowly, the fear on his face morphed into disgust.  “I hope you live a long life, Mr. Zuckerberg.  You deserve an eternity alone,” he spits out.

 “Dustin,” Mark calls as he turns to leave.  “Dustin, he left.  I didn’t fire him, he _left_ ,” Mark’s voice cracks.  He clenches his jaw shut so it won’t shake.

 Dustin closes his eyes and turns around.  “Yes, Mark,” Dustin says like he’s talking to a particularly dull child.  “Eduardo left.  After you diluted his shares to point-zero-fucking- _three_ -percent!”

 “I—that—” Mark draws in a shaky breathy.  “I—I didn’t…he wasn’t supposed to…” Mark’s entire body trembles.

 “Save your fucking bullshit for when Eduardo comes after you with lawyers.  Maybe they’ll believe you actually have a soul inside your robot body,” Dustin states, and he slams the door behind him.

 Mark stares at the door, the door that is supposed to signify his distinction from the rest of his company, to represent that he was the creator and founder and that he has earned the privilege of being better than all of the rest of them.  

 Mark has never been one for metaphors, but he can’t help but feel like now the door represents a part of his life being shut.


End file.
